A cultural linguistics approach to the content analysis of English reading textbooks taught to third, fourth, and fifth grade learners at a Lebanese private school -

Abstract

The global spread of English is seen by some as an opportunity for international communication or cultural dialogue (Fishman, Conrad, Lopez-Rubal, 1996; Fishman, 1999; Crystal 2003; Bisong 1995;Byram 1997; Feng and Byram 2002; Shaaban 2005). Other linguists consider it a product for cultural, economic, and cultural domination (Phillipson 1992; Pennycook and Coutand-Marin 2003; Shin, Edge 2003; Shin, Eslami, and Chen 2011; Matsuda 2003; Mahboob 2009; Taki 2008; Alptekin 2002; Karmani 2005). Views on culture are also diverse. It is a shared set for beliefs (Palmer 1997) or frames (Entman 1993; Tannen 1979) that condition its people's behavior and perception of reality. It is an adaptive system, or a system of ideas, or symbols (Keesing 1974), or a system of absractions (Sharifian 2011; Palmer 1996). This research is concerned with the cultural content of the textbooks. The research analyzed three American reading textbooks for grades 3, 4, and 5 to discern their cultural content. The language of their 210 texts was analyzed following cultural linguistics approach (Palmer 1996; Sharifian and Palmer 1997) which contends that culture is a set of conceptualizations shared by a group (Sharifian 2003) and that language acts as a memory bank for such conceptualizations. After several readings of the texts, data was collected in terms of cultural conceptualizations, i.e. role and event schemas, categories, and conceptual metaphors. The patterns of association among the various cultural conceptualizations alongside patterns in language use helped discern three cultural modelsand one foundational metaphor that pointed to the textbooks' worldview. Three cultural models and one foundational metaphor revealed the worldviews of the American Dream and the American melting pot. It was found the books draw an all-American culture with minimal representation of othercultures including the learners' own. Some suggestions are made advocating a model of hybridity for a more balanced representation of cultures in the textbooks.